Folengio, John Baptist

, was born at Mantua in 1490, and at the age of sixteen he | entered into a Benedictine monastery in his native city, where his talents and industry obtained for him a high reputation for proficiency in literature and sacred criticism, while the excellence of his disposition rendered him an object of general esteem. He was selected to fill the most important and distinguished stations in his order, and he was afterwards chosen by pope Paul IV. as visitor of the Benedictine foundations in Spain. When he had performed this task, he had returned to his native country, and devoted himself almost wholly to theological studies, in the course of which he conceived the hopeless project of uniting Catholics and Protestants in one communion. After a life spent in the service of his fellow creatures, he died in 1559, in his seventieth year. He left behind him many theological works, of which the principal were “Commentaries upon the Epistles of St. James, St. Peter, and the first Epistle of St. John,” published in 1551, in 8vo; also a “Commentary upon the Psalms.” These works must have had more than common merit in respect to liberality of sentiment, as they were prohibited by his church. His “Commentary on the Psalms” indeed was reprinted in 1585, but revised and curtailed. Dupin says that he “writes purely and nobly” and Thuanus had reason to say, “that no man will ever repent the reading of his Commentaries.” ¹